This invention is related generally to a process for active resisted exercise and to an exemplary apparatus for performing such a process.
A number of processes of exercise and exercise apparatus have been developed over the years wherein an external force is applied to the body to oppose forced muscular contractions thereby developing an increase in muscle power and hypertrophy.
In conducting such exercises, the external applied force is either dynamic or static. The method and apparatus of the present invention relates to dynamic exercising wherein the person exercising resists a yielding force. In such dynamic exercising equipment, it has been recognized that the muscle is not equally powerful throughout its entire range of motion and that the resistive force should vary as the output force of the person exercising. In this regard, attention is directed to U.S. Pat. No. 3,465,592 issued to James J. Perrine on Sept. 9, 1969.
The object of the Perrine invention is to provide a process and apparatus for exercising which will oppose the movement of the person exercising throughout the full range of movement of the muscle, and which will afford any desired, adjustable, resistive force which the person exercising is capable of overcoming and which will also be in equilibrium with the person's applied force, avoiding recoil or unbalancing effects.
Perrine accomplishes this objective by permitting the speed of an exercise movement to accelerate essentially unopposed by resistive forces from zero to a preset or predetermined rate of speed, and any magnitude of muscular force tending to accelerate the exercise movement beyond the predetermined rate of speed is counteracted by the exercise system. Thus, the Perrine process establishes a maximum rate of speed obtainable regardless of the magnitude of muscular force applied by the subject by counteracting any magnitude of applied muscular force tending to accelerate the movable exercising member beyond a predetermined rate of speed.